


It'll be Alright

by bananabog



Category: One Piece
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-22 23:38:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7458142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bananabog/pseuds/bananabog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a storm on the horizon, and its name is Nami. Zoro has to weather it.</p><p>Nakamashippy fluff. Originally posted on LJ, 2006-07-03</p>
            </blockquote>





	It'll be Alright

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally for op_exchange on LJ, for LJ user genuinelie's second prompt of Zoro/Nami "It'll be alright". Also, holy shit, het!

Oh, it was a _beautiful_ day.  
  
They were crossing a particularly troublesome patch of ocean that day. The weather in Grand Line had been as unpredictable as when they had first entered - Nami blamed the deceptively calm cumulus clouds she’d spotted earlier upon waking up: easily recognizable by their flat bases and lumpy tops, sparsely scattered across a sky that stretched as wide and as blue as the sea they sailed in. Clouds like this usually boded fair weather, and she should have known better than to take for granted the weather wouldn’t just change on her right then and there.  
  
But she’d been up the whole of last night, trying to decipher her scrawled, hurried notes hastily penned in her notebook, detailing their last whereabouts and the events that had happened, frustrating herself trying to transfer the gibberish to legible diagrams, charts and graphs. How long had it been since they’d settled down long enough for her to write without her being interrupted by some random Marines, or the rubber brat screaming about something or other; or Usopp having to get to her stop the two testosterone-pumped morons onboard from killing each other yet _again_ ; or when she finally managed to find time to herself to catch up on god knew how much work had been piling up, only to be alerted to the fact that something in the weather had changed, _again_ , and that they needed her, Nami, or we’re all going to die; you’re our navigator, Nami, Nami, Nami Nami Nami…  
  
She’d taken one look at the clouds in the sky this morning, five seconds after stumbling out half-awake (or dead, it was hard to tell) from her room, hair mussed and a bit of drool still clinging to the corners of her lips. Told Luffy they should be getting fair weather and prayed to the heavens that just once, things would go her way.  
  
She should have known that if anything could have gotten worse than the catastrophic mess it already was, it would have.  
  
Which was the reason she was now running around the slippery decks with the rest of the crew, throat raw from screaming to be heard over the deafening thunder, cold, freezing rain and sea spray whipping up against her, making sure everything was in some semblance of order while simultaneously shrieking out commands for the boys: “Tie everything down! Make sure the doors to the cabins are properly shut or they’ll get flooded; and pull the whip-staff harder, Chopper, because the ship isn’t bloody moving – why the hell aren’t the mikan trees covered?! Usopp, tie the damn canon down before it goes through the stern. Someone check the sails! We need to unload some cargo from the hold, it’s dragging the ship down – not the Berri, for god’s sake, Luffy, put those back! Put Merry hard to port! No, _port_ , not starboard – _left, you idiot, Zoro! Left!!_ ”  
  
The Going Merry battled with the treacherous waves and the angry thunderstorm for what Nami would later describe as an eternity and which Robin corrected to ten minutes and thirty-four-point-five seconds, before they came crashing down into a relatively calmer stretch of sea. Merry shuddered, dipped, and swayed dangerously on the waves before gradually stabilizing herself. There was an odd silence, broken only by Luffy and Usopp gasping raggedly for breath as they collapsed on deck, as everyone clambered to their feet to watch the strange spectacle of what looked like divided weather.  
  
It was still raining heavily, with furious streaks of blinding yellow flashing through the dark skies and the waves tossing about violently, but that was all happening a couple of yards away and a stark contrast to the torpid climate they were currently in.  
  
Nami sat down very suddenly on the floor, the strength unexpectedly gone from her legs. She barely registered the cook’s concerned cry from somewhere further behind her, and didn’t even notice how the seawater was ruining the material of the skirt she was wearing.  
  
Luffy let out a long sigh, his face scrunched up into exaggerated relief. “Eeeeh, I’m glad that’s over.”  
  
“Nami! You said it would be fair weather today!” Usopp had sat up rapidly, springing up from his sprawled position on the floor to whirl around on crossed legs. He jabbed a finger at her direction. “We almost died back there!”  
  
“Well, I got you all out, didn’t I?” she snapped. She was annoyed with herself for having made that little mistake earlier, a lapse in responsibility and judgment that had landed them this little mess. She didn’t want to be reminded of it, and it was still way too goddamn early in the morning for shit like this, dammit. She hadn’t had a chance to eat – the ship had about capsized the instant she’d lifted her fork to her lips, and after that everything had just spiraled into chaos. She was tired and cranky and pissed from not having accomplished much from last night, the idiocy of her crewmates from earlier suddenly seemed like the most blatant sin in the entire world, and if the sniper opened that mouth of his to lay blame on her one more time, she was going to have to rip up the mast, his precious Merry be damned, and shove it between his lips and hopefully out through the back of his skull.  
  
Nami transferred all these thoughts into a single, withering death glare, and directed it to Usopp just as he started opening his mouth. He caught the hint and mumbled, edging behind the captain for safety, “I-I meant, you’re hardly ever w-wrong when it comes to the w-weather…”  
  
“Shit.”  
  
Everyone turned to see Zoro emerging from the storage room. He paused in the doorway, looking somewhat agitated in an apologetic sort of way, and he had an arm behind his back. Nami felt her insides shrivel up and die, knowing that somehow, _somehow_ …  
  
“Zoro?” Luffy said, sitting up, watching the other approach.  
  
The swordsman met Nami’s eyes for a second before he glanced away again, gritting his teeth, eyes darting upwards and to the left as though he might find an excuse written somewhere. “Not… not all the doors were shut properly.”  
  
He hesitated, then pulled out the arm he was hiding to hold out a couple sheets of paper. The highest quality parchment, the finest in East Blue, costing nearly a hundred and fifty Berri a piece. At least four or so maps of the recent islands they’d been to, meticulously finished pages of her night’s effort were clumped together, irreversibly waterlogged, with blotches of spilt ink that were beginning to bleed rapidly down the fiber.  
  
All her hard work. Ruined.  
  
She stared, incomprehensive. Zoro continued holding the remnants of her work up, like he was waiting for her to run over so he could put it over and around her neck, like a garland or something.  
  
“Didn’t anyone check to see if the storage room door had been properly secured?” Culumus clouds, clouds that usually indicated fair weather, but if put into an unstable atmosphere, could turn into its own hell. There was a new term for that sort of weather now, and its name started with “N”.  
  
“I did,” Zoro said, oblivious as ever, “but it must have somehow gotten loose during the – ”  
  
Nami sprang up, grabbed the mast, tore it clear off its roots and thrust the flag end straight through Zoro’s head. And his blood splattered the deck in crimson glory.  
  
She wished. No amount of gore would be able to make up for the absolutely despair and rage that had filled her chest just then.  
  
When she spoke again her voice was low. “All of you get lost right now.”  
  
Luffy frowned, concern flitting over his features. “Nami…”  
  
“Three seconds before you all owe me your souls and an infinite amount of Berri that not even slogging through this lifetime will be able to cover!”  
  
There were a few startled squeaks and yelps and a noisy mess of sandals and boots and hooves rushing for cover. Sanji spared her one last longing, worried glance before he too, slunk back to the galley to clean up what was left of the morning’s unfinished breakfast. Robin was already nowhere to be found, probably already below decks to help straighten out the cabins. And Zoro…  
  
Nami raised her eyes just in time to catch him carelessly dumping the destroyed maps overboard, before he swung himself below decks to join Luffy and the others.  
  
The hatch to the men’s quarters shut with a barely audible click. There was silence once again, this time accompanied by the gentle loll of waves rocking the hull and the distant cries of gulls in the vicinity. And only then did Nami hunch over, press her face into her palms, and start to sob.  
  


x x x x x x

  
  
Lunch saw a missing navigator and a gloomy, melancholy crew of six. Even Luffy seemed to have lost his appetite, and he slunk off after his sixth helping (a small lunch, for him) together with Usopp and Chopper in hopes of cheering the redhead up. Whatever antics they’d used apparently didn’t work, because there’d been furious shrieking, a loud crash that indicated they’d been thrown through a door or a wall, and a loud slam accompanied by much moaning and groaning in agony by the three.  
  
“She’s still upset?” Sanji mused, as he passed the clean dishes for Zoro to dry.  
  
“Just moody.” Robin smiled kindly at the cook from where she was sipping her midday coffee at the table, the extra pair of hands next to him disappearing with a flutter of petals as the last of the dirty dishes were passed. “She’s better now though – I suppose she just wanted to have something to vent about for the time being.”  
  
Sanji nodded at her. The archaeologist passed her empty cup to him, patted his hand once in thanks for the meal, and left the galley. Leaving both the swordsman and the cook alone, together.  
  
The blond left his station at the sink temporarily, making various clinking and clanking noises at the counter next to the other while he busied himself making something. Zoro silently took over the rest of the washing up, and was genuinely surprised when he’d turned around after finishing them to find the cook holding up a freshly prepared drink to his face. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it was mint-green, complete with a miniature mountain of crushed ice floating on the top, what looked like honey glazing, a little slice of mikan fit onto the glass edge, and a fancy bendy purple straw.  
  
“Take it,” Sanji said, gruffly, and pushed the cool drink into his hands before fumbling around behind him for something else.  
  
Zoro blinked, frowned suspiciously at the concoction in his hands. “Gee, thanks, but uh…”  
  
“Oh.” Sanji waved irritably at him with a cigarette-wielding hand. “I meant take it to Nami-san, dumbass. S’not for you.”  
  
Now Zoro was confused. “Aren’t you usually the one to be doing this stuff?”  
  
Sanji continued rummaging through the cabinets, not meeting the other’s gaze. “She saw you dump the maps overboard, you know.”  
  
“They were ruined. What was I supposed to do, frame them up in remembrance?”  
  
“No,” Sanji growled at him, straightening with a plate, some spreads, and a loaf of bread in his hands, “but at least spare a thought for the lady’s feelings. She looked exhausted. Doesn’t take much to realize she was up working on them all night.”  
  
Zoro blinked at him intelligently.  
  
“Come on. Even you can’t be that _dense_ … Look, my precious Nami-san spent the whole night up working on those maps. Plus she’s had a bad day.” The cook began slicing the loaf into even pieces, before swiftly covering them with generous amount of salad and tuna dressing. “It was your fault the water got in and ruined them all, and then you had the gall to admit to her that it was _your_ negligence, and _then_ you toss them overboard before her own eyes. And you didn’t even apologize.”  
  
“That’s right,” Zoro said, still not getting it, “but why me? You’re the Love Cook.”  
  
“It’s not me she’s pissed with.” Sanji tossed his spent cigarette in the sink, fumbled in his breast pocket for a new one. “Well, I mean, she’s probably pissed with the whole world right now, in general, but still. Wouldn’t hurt for you to be an actual gentleman once in a while.”  
  
“I know that, idiot. She’s _your_ Nami-swan,” Zoro growled, shifting the drink to his other hand – the ice was starting to numb his fingers. “Why the hell are you letting me do this?”  
  
Sanji glanced at Zoro. For a brief second the swordsman thought he saw the other’s gaze falter, cringe a little. Then the cook looked away just as quickly, grunted, lit his new cigarette. “The ice is melting, shithead. Don’t let my work go to waste.”  
  
“But – “  
  
“Go, idiot,” Sanji grumbled, pushing the plate of sandwiches into his hands and shoving him out the door. “I need to start planning for dinner."  
  
“Alright, alright, geez.” Zoro chased off his hands and stalked off to find the navigator, grumbling about damn secretive cooks and pms-ing bitches and how she’d better appreciate him coming all the way to bring this crap to her before it froze his fingers off.  
  
Sanji’s eyes followed him until be disappeared behind the galley, before he shut the door on himself and leant against it, smoking quietly for a few contemplative moments. Then he rolled up his sleeve cuffs and headed over to the list of to-dos he’d tacked up on the fridge earlier. It was a little too premature to start preparing dinner, but there wasn’t anything wrong with being early, either.  
  


x x x x x x

  
  
“Thank you, Sanji-kun, but I’m busy right now,” Nami said, almost automatically, when the rap came against the entrance to their room, the nib of her quill scratching swift but precise, unwavering strokes against her paper.  
  
“Oi, woman, you still holing your miserable self up in there?”  
  
Nami stopped in her inking, turned a surprised expression to the trapdoor in her ceiling before bounding up the stairs to unlatch it. A visit from the swordsman was rare. “Zoro?”  
  
“I know my own name, thanks,” he said, clomping down into the room and across to the miniature bar table to set down his load. Robin, surprisingly, wasn’t in the room with her. He gestured at the small meal with a expression of slight disgust.  
  
“The cook made it. Told me to take it to you.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, grimacing slightly. Nami was probably going to use his apology as future blackmail material, but a man had to do what a man had to do. “Look, about earlier… um… I… uh…” He took a deep breath and exhaled his next words in a gush. “M’sorryruinedy’maps.”  
  
There. He’d said it. He glanced up to see her reaction. Nami was back at her desk, drink in one hand and a sandwich in the other, peering through her spectacles over a reference book, cross-referencing it with her current map.  
  
“Oh, did you say something?” she asked, noticing he had suddenly decided to hit the floor face-first.  
  
“N-Nothing…”  
  
“Alright.” And she was back to her maps, eyes studiously scanning the pages of tiny, printed text, chewing absent-mindedly on the end of her straw as she read.  
  
“…” Zoro edged cautiously closer. He wasn’t afraid of the navigator, but she had a tendency to get dangerously violent whenever she was in one of her mood swings, and as far as he knew, Luffy, Usopp and Chopper were still recovering from Nami-inflicted injuries.  
  
He froze when Nami glanced up sharply to regard him. “What?”  
  
He recovered fast, glared back. “Is there a problem with me being in this room?”  
  
She folded her arms, spinning around in her chair to fully face him. “If you’re here to try and talk your way out of that three hundred percent interest you owe me…”  
  
“What? No, I wasn’t – Hell, woman, I’m trying to be nice to you.” He suddenly realized that in all their time spent together on this ship, he’d never really observed her or the way she’d worked, before. The period where she’d fallen ill after the Little Garden episode aside, this was the first time he’d been to the womens’ quarters. There were other times where she worked in the storage room, too, but he’d never checked up on her there, either.  
  
She frowned, unconvinced. “Don’t you need to be training or sleeping or something?”  
  
“Just shut up and work on your maps,” he growled, sitting himself in a stool at the counter. “I’m not gonna bother you. I’m not like Luffy or Usopp or that pansy-ass chef.”  
  
Nami opened her mouth to retort, decided she wasn’t in the mood for arguing, and swung back to her desk. Within seconds, the sounds of quill scratching over parchment filled the room again.  
  
Zoro leant back against the bar, folded his arms behind his head and tried to think of all the reasons why he shouldn’t be here. He had no obligation to the navigator – not counting the interest he owed her (which he wouldn’t be repaying anytime soon anyway, given his incredibly insufficient funds). That was one. He’d already apologized (albeit it’d gone unheard) – that was two. Nami hated him for being a bastard, he hated her for being a witch, that was three; he still had two hundred presses and three hundred sit-ups to complete before dinnertime; and they probably weren’t going to have any sort of meaningful conversation anyway, so it was going to be useless for him to just sit in and watch the way her brows furrowed in concentration, occasionally pushing her reading glasses up the bridge of her petite nose, casually tucking stray strands of ginger hair behind her ears; the way she’d give her head a little toss to get the fringe out of her eyes, how she placed the pencil between her teeth for a couple of seconds while she straightened up to retie her hair into a loose, temporary ponytail, high enough to keep it from brushing over the slight sheen of sweat that’d began to build on the dip between her bare shoulder blades. It was a hot day, even inside the cabin with its fans and ventilation, and she’d taken to wearing nothing but a sleeveless tank that matched the shade of her drink and clung to her figure like a leech, low-hung shorts which legs cut off too close to her hips for his comfort...  
  
_…wait, what?_ Zoro shook his head furiously. _No, I don’t give a damn about that woman at all. I just… have a lack of nothing else interesting enough to observe._ That sounded plausible enough a reason.  
  
But there really _was_ nothing else of interest in the room to look at. There were books in the little shelf by the corner, but Zoro wasn’t the type to read, and walking out midway would have been impolite and awkward, considering he’d just offered his companionship for the afternoon. And then there was still that _small_ tiny little itty bit of guilt from the morning’s incidents. The bastard cook could call him uncouth for all he cared, but it didn’t mean he didn’t have morals.  
  
So he sat at the bar and watched Nami work. Observed the way her hands would move gracefully across the stretch of paper before her, almost gliding over its surface; the way her slender fingers gripped the quill and worked it with the sort of effortless elegance Sanji displayed with his kitchen knives, or him with his swords. The way her hands remained stable, firm and sturdy as she drew large arcs over the parchment, made swift, rapid strokes down the geometrical rulers, set squares, and other mathematical instruments she used to aid in her drawing of nautical maps. The way they flexed, swayed, turned and pitched and curved, controlling but not limiting the quill in her fingers, strong but not forcing her motions.  
  
And then there was the way she sat. Nami didn’t hunch. She sat straight and upright in her seat, poised to perfection, as though for a camera, slender arms framing her work as she leaned forward on an elbow to hold an instrument steady, the other always moving. Long, limber legs crossed daintily without even meaning to _look_ dainty, like how Luffy couldn’t help looking like an absolute child in his sleep despite his seventeen years, like how Usopp’s hair was always somehow artfully messy. The way her pale figure made a sort of satisfying, pleasing silhouette of curves and soft angles against the dark furniture around her.  
  
Sharp, intelligent eyes softened by femininity and a slight smile on her lips as she worked to bring each stroke of her quill into completion. They way her gaze managed to remain so absolutely focused, so concentrated – and Zoro recognized himself in that expression, the determination, the kind of satisfaction that one could only derive from accomplishing something or doing something along those lines, like him after a good, hard workout or a well-fought spar with the captain or the cook.  
  
And his eyes kept roaming, studying her, just gazing, looking, taking everything in appreciatively without a single word. Nami hadn’t even noticed, too caught up in her inking, and it was perhaps several hours later when Luffy’s excited cries of dinner rang across the deck overhead that she looked up from her table to gasp.  
  
“Dinner already?” Nami took off her spectacles, stretched cat-like in her seat, ribs uplifting, spine arched in a slender curve. “Damn, I’m only up to the second map…”  
  
And then she caught him staring. She laughed then, and Zoro startled slightly; she was obviously in a better mood now than before, but it’d seemed like mere minutes and the change in disposition was somewhat alarming. “I can’t believe you didn’t actually fall asleep; you got so silent back there!”  
  
“Give me some credit, will you?” He pushed off from the bar, mussing up his hair a little. “Get upstairs before the captain finishes off everything. Or do I have to serve you again?”  
  
She stuck her tongue out at him. “I’d like that, but I can help myself.” She elbowed him as she shoved past, teasingly. “Wouldn’t want the great Roronoa Zoro to strain himself over anything.”  
  
He smacked her across the head. Nami whacked him back, then scrambled out the trapdoor, laughing, to avoid his retaliatory hit. He allowed himself a small smile while her back was turned. Yep, Nami was back to normal.  
  
He got a few stares when they sat down for dinner together, however, and ignoring them wasn’t working. “What?”  
  
Sanji pointed an accusatory finger at him. “Nami-san’s _happy_. What the hell did you do to her while you were in her room, you pervertic bastard?”  
  
“Pervert,” Luffy seconded, casting sideways glances at the swordsman.  
  
“Pervert,” Usopp and Chopper echoed in unison, with likewise similar expressions.  
  
“I – what?! I didn’t do anything! You clear out that filthy mind of yours at once! The three of you, too!”  
  
“I’ll be going back to my room,” Nami said cheerfully, going quite unheard amidst the miniature scuffle that was breaking out, and she left with her dinner plate without further notice. Robin watched her leave, smiled, and continued eating her dinner in relative peace while the five boys got themselves into a full-blown wrestle.  
  
  


x x x x x x

  
  
They bumped into each other again later that night. Zoro had just emerged from the bathroom, and Nami was making her way to the crow’s nest for watch duty.  
  
“Hey,” Zoro said.  
  
“Hey,” she replied.  
  
She began the climb up the rigging to the nest, swinging her weight up almost effortlessly. Zoro stood beneath her, watching her form ascend for a couple of seconds before repeating, “Hey, woman.”  
  
“I have a name, you know,” she called, without looking down.  
  
“Tsk. Look, those maps…”  
  
She paused to cast a curious glance down at him. Zoro looked to the side. “Um. I’m sorry I ruined your maps, this morning. Must have been a lot of hard work, those.”  
  
“Did you just apologize? To me?” She sounded incredulous.  
  
“Yes, goddamnit.” He rolled his eyes at her. “Look, I… I saw how you worked today. I used to think making maps were easy, just draw a couple lines and shit, follow some reference, and voila. Now I know better. You sure spent a hell of a lot of effort on those two maps you did this afternoon.”  
  
Nami’s expression was hard to make out in this lighting, this distance, but Zoro thought she might have looked somewhat touched. “Gee, well… thank you.” She sounded awkwardly embarrassed, before her tone of voice grew teasing, familiar, “though that means another couple hundred Berri to that debt you already owe me. The paper you tossed out _was_ expensive.”  
  
“Dammit! I should have known apologizing was a bad idea!”  
  
Nami laughed, stuck her arms though the rigging so she could lean on the ropes to look down at him. “Really, Zoro. An apology from you is rare, so, the kind, benevolent, forgiving me will that take as payment. You still owe me that three hundred percent, though.”  
  
“Kind, forgiving, my ass.” Then he mumbled something that got lost on the wind.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I said,” he repeated a little louder, “do you want me to cover your watch, woman?”  
  
“…You will _still_ owe me three hundred percent interest, Zoro.”  
  
“I’m trying to be nice, idiot,” he growled, but pulled himself up into the rigging without waiting for a reply anyway. “Get back to sleep. You probably won’t be able to keep awake, anyway, at the rate you’ve been working, and I don’t need a random Marine attacking us in the middle of the night.”  
  
“Thank you.” Nami’s voice was soft, but sincere, and she gave his arm a brief squeeze of gratitude as he climbed past her. Zoro grumbled some more about crazy money-minded women who worked too hard and continued climbing up without a second glance. From his post, he watched as the navigator carefully descended the ropes, waving goodnight to him, smiling, before she disappeared inside her cabin.  
  
Zoro exhaled loudly, tried to scrub away the sudden spread of warmth across his cheeks, and started his night watch.


End file.
